EP 47: From Hard Hats to Dashboards: Modernising Health & Safety

Tragically, you know, in the UK, you know, every year something like 150 people lose their lives just going to work from accidents. Okay. From the safety side of health and safety.

And it's interesting because sometimes metrics drive the wrong behavior. So you might look at a site and go, actually we want zero incidents, zero near misses. I actually think high near misses is good because then you're improving to actually reduce the chance of one of those serious events ever happening. But the, the culture around numbers is that zero for safety is a good number. And I'm just not convinced it is.

You know, there's a big thing at the moment from a health and safety perspective about they calling it safety clutter. Okay. And they're saying that there's loads of, of crap that organizations have.

Yep.

That that are often historic. Right.

And what was so funny is they put a guide together on safety clutter and it was 18 pages long. I thought somebody chuck that through chat GPT, will you? And bring it down to a one page, one bit of a four.

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Well, good morning, Colin, and welcome, Tim.

Thank you very much.

So you asked me what we're going to talk about and I like talking about everything and anything. Okay, so let's start with safety and robots.

Safety and robots.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So I suppose one of the things that's interesting about safety in robots is I suppose the biggest, the biggest thing that affects people is probably health rather than safety. But obviously health doesn't affect a robot in quite the same way. But I suppose how safety can impact people is that they tend to move when they, when they're not meant to. And, and that's how, that's how people get hurt. So, but introducing, introducing safety into. Sorry, introducing robot robots and automation I suppose into, into business I think is really important, you know, and, but, but with it comes, comes, comes an element of risk.

Absolutely. And if you look at some of the examples like Ocado, they've effectively taken people out of the factory and completely robotized it. Amazon are doing something very similar. Essentially one of their biggest costs is the people in the warehouses. And so they'll look to reduce that. And for certain environments, that makes complete sense. If we can put robots onto Mars and begin the process of building a space station there and the same on the moon, that means it's less of a harsh environment when people get there. That's got to be a good thing. And Caterpillar have had robots of a form in the quarries that they operate for, well, probably 15 years now. So it's creeping, isn't it?

I think so. I think, you know, if, if, you know, if you think about what a, what a robot can do or what automation can do is it can get consistency. And I think that's, you know, that's, that's one of the things that, you know, if you've got, if you've got a process or a business where you're, where you're looking to do something similar time after time after time, then why wouldn't you want to automate it? Why wouldn't you want to put, you know, put some kind of robot or something like that in that in place? Where the safety element starts to come in is that those things sometimes go wrong, you know, and so it's when it, you know, it's when the, it's when the process comes to a stop, comes to a standstill, and then all of a sudden you've then got to interact. You know, you've got an individual person has to interact with the, with the machine and, and I suppose have you, have you put the right control in place to actually, you know, to actually stop the kit from, from moving or, you know, from, from doing what it's, what it's programmed to do when, when you don't want to do it. And if you can, if you can.

Do, if you can get that control.

In place, then that can be good. But, but I think, you know, getting, getting rid of, you know, getting rid of the mundane tasks and things like, you know, you know, manual handling, you know, manual handling is a massive, a massive issue to, you know, to, you know, to individuals and to people. I can remember many years ago, I went to this, I went to this cigar manufacturing facility in Bristol.

Okay, I thought you were going to say Cuba in cube.

Well, I thought, right, I was expecting, right. When I went through the, when I went through the door to find a load of Cuban ladies rolling cigars on their thighs. But that isn't how it works really.

There's a surprise in Bristol.

What they do, what they do is they, is they basically they, they mash.

Up the, the tobacco leaf okay. And then they, they put, they put a load of chemicals in.

Now this may not be what they do. That's what I think they do to put a lot of chemicals in.

So you get really addicted to it, all right?

And, and then they roll tobacco leaf.

On the outside and then they get this tube and then, so you end up with two, two cigars. They, then it then comes down the production line and it gets to this point and there was this person, right, that was basically having to pick up these, these cigars and turn and put them into a box. And then they would pick up some more cigars and they would turn and they will put them into a box. And this is the job that this, this person was doing all day long and they were getting problems with, you know, this, this turning movement, you know, was, was causing the problems with their back and they were having to stand a lot of the time and all that kind of stuff. And the answer, the answer was to, was to water me. It, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't to, to do a risk assessment around, around, you know, and training people to turn better, you know, the way, the way to sort that problem out.

Pick and pack and a roller into a box, the next box.

That's right, that's right. You know, all of a sudden your productivity goes up and all sorts of things. And I suppose, you know, people, you know, people get frightened about, you know, about how technology can start to, can start to influence, you know, their opportunities in jobs and stuff like that. And there's, there's, there's a lot of people that are scared, but I suppose you've got to, you just got to work with it, haven't you?

Yeah, it's just another tool.

Yeah, work with it, work alongside it and.

Yeah, so let's go back to Influential Management Group. What made you start it?

Okay, so, so, so basically, right, we're, we are. We started out as a health and safety consultancy. Okay. To be fair, the first iteration wasn't called, Wasn't called Influential Group. It was called, it was called Safety Horizon. I set it up with a, with a guy down in Bristol, a guy called Mark, who's a really nice guy. And, and, and basically over time we evolved. I ended up moving up to the Midlands. He stayed down in Bristol and we decided that we had, we'd actually split the, split our clients. He took some, I took, I took others. And an influential management group came around because, because I was starting to find that people who were struggling from a health and safety perspective in Actual fact were struggling from an environmental and a quality and a production and all sorts of all sorts of reasons. You know, if they, if they weren't good at managing health and safety, they tended to not be that good at managing full stop. And so, so influential management really you know, as it's, you know, we set up a business that really wanted to try and better influence people and so rather than, rather than telling people exactly what they needed to do, you know, was really to try and get them thinking about what was the best way that they could go about doing things. And when we were there to help and support and provide the writer, you know, provide the right guidance, I suppose. And so, you know, so we provide, we provide support around safety, health, environment, quality, business improvement. There's all sorts of bits and pieces that we, that we find that we, that we get involved with. Health and safety is I suppose is my, is my, I suppose is my passion is the bit that I that I really, that I really, you know, I'm focused on. And I suppose I, I had a health and safety role in a large corporation I was working for before set the business up and it's about, it's about trying to, trying to help people make better decisions, you know, and, and you know, because, because every single day people are out in the workplace and, and are making decisions because of the environment and the factors around them, you know, and the things that they're. This impacting them. And you know, what we're trying to do is just get people to just think things through. Okay. But also I suppose set people up to be successful rather than normally health and safety is about when it all goes wrong. Whereas what we try to do is be ahead of the game and get things set up for success rather than deal with the failures.

And so what sort of companies are influential management group working with?

Oh, loads of different sectors. We work, we work in construction, we work in renewable energy. We work in, We've got, we've got a company that run suntan salons which is interesting.

Which is interesting and maybe we should both go. But you definitely but not too long.

Okay.

And but you know, but that brings.

I mean that brings a whole load of. There's a whole load of bad publicity around, around that and you know, you know, and just you know, people getting burned and you know these places, you know, a little bit like gambling. I suppose these places tend to be in the poorer parts of the country, you know, where, you know, and I suppose where, where people in society are looking for a, for a, for A for a. Almost like a cheap way out of their, their, their existence. They're, you know, where they are, you know, going, going along and having a. Getting us a bit of a color is, is something that, you know, South Wales is a lot, there's a lot of suntan salons in South Wales. But we also work, we work in engineering, manufacturing, all sorts. Basically where there's risk is areas where I suppose where we get most opportunity to influence.

Fantastic. And so what made you make the leap and start Safety Remotely?

Okay, so. It was actually before COVID Okay, so Safety remotely is this thing that I've had in the back of my mind for quite a number of years about, about developing a system or developing a process that actually doesn't just help the end user, helps the client, but also helps me as a business to, you know, to sort of manage, you know, manage the health and safety support. And so, you know, so before COVID we started to put it together. When Covid came along, to be fair, it almost sank our business because all of a sudden people were saying to us, you can't come to site and everything or a lot of what we were doing until that point was going on to site and we were doing training, you know, we were doing site visits, we're doing inspections, we're doing audits and all that kind of stuff. And, and so, and so I suppose it in a way accelerated the process that we, that we actually put together a system that allowed us to, to, to have a much clearer understanding of where our clients issues and problems were. But also it allowed us to actually help them remotely without actually having to go to go to site. And that's why we called it Safety Remotely. I wish I called it Health and.

Safety Remotely because I'm a real, I've.

Got a real passion about health and.

I suppose like Safety Remotely is. Buzzy, I think you make a name too long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

I think you're right. So, yeah, so it's, you know, and it's, you know, the, the whole, the whole idea is that it, it helps two people, it helps our clients have a better understanding of, of, of what they need to do to say on top of their, their, their legal compliance, but also just the good things that a health and safety perspective and it gives me as a health and safety consultant, fantastic insight in where my services can best support them.

So as you look ahead to the future, extending that so that it's enabling other health and safety consultants to benefit from the insights it has from the understanding of the risks on site, regardless of the site type. So it might be a quarry where there's seven different sites. It might be a manufacturing environment, it might be something quite different. That won't really matter, will it?

Not at all. And I think, you know, you know, I mean, to be fair, you know, one of the areas that you're helping us with or you've been helping us with is to, is to get that, that, that the system to, to understand that a little bit better, you know, so when we, when we put in the information about the business, it's already thinking, all right, you know, this is a, this is an engineering place, so there's certain risks that are going to be more significant, like fire, you know, like noise, vibration. Those things are going to be more prevalent in that sort of environment than if it's a call center, you know, where it's going to be, you know, it's going to be maybe stress pressure, DSE assessments, that kind of stuff. So, so getting the, getting the system to be, to be a little bit more intuitive, I think is, you know, is really important. And, and then, you know, without it, you know, you know, without it being, you know, too, I suppose, too focused, we need it to be able to provide us the information so that we as trained and competent health and safety professionals can interpret information and then provide the best, the best advice and the best support.

And the interesting thing for me is the sort of the parallels with some other projects that we're involved in. So actually near miss and incident reporting. When you have enough data, then you can predict and provide interventions that happen ahead of that curve. And so in the same way that we've got a solution which is being used in care homes to help reduce distress with dementia and Alzheimer's, fundamentally it's the same logic and understanding of, here's the events, here are the triggers, and if we can get enough data, then we can begin to make those intervention recommendations ahead of the time. These are the things that you need to be implementing because of the risk. And if you don't, the cost to your business will be this. And that's then going to empower any health and safety specialist that's using safety remotely to be able to have that insight and to help reduce workplace incidents. And ultimately here we're talking about lives, aren't we?

Oh, without a doubt. You know, I mean, you know, you know, tragically, you know, in the UK, you know, every year, you know, something like 150 people basically lose their lives just going to Work. Okay from, from accidents. Okay. From the safety side of health and safety. When you introduce the health side of it, you know, the numbers, the numbers go up to 12, 13,000, you know, it's just enormous, you know, and you know, and a lot of these people are exposed to, have been exposed to that health risk for a long time. And so, you know, so, you know, so I see, I see safety remotely has got a massive responsibility to, you know, to, to make people more aware of the risks that there are in the business and, and to, to help them better understand those risks and, and help them, you know, put better controls into place so that we're not hurting people, you know, because, because you know, the cost, the cost is enormous, not just financially but families, you know, it's.

Just deaths is a huge number. But the amount of incidents where people lose, etc. Site, I mean just the impact of safety glasses was brought home to me during my time at Perkins. Just seeing the amount of, well, frankly bits of metal in the very old parts of the factory way back and the eyewash stations were in constant use despite safety glasses. And over time those working environments have improved, so that's no longer an issue. But that sort of change can be applied in any workplace, can't it, just to reduce the risk of incidents?

Without a doubt. And I think one of the problems that you know, that the health and safety profession has, but also, you know, businesses is if they gather the information, you know, that loads of companies have got near miss reporting processes but all this information comes in, they do nothing with it.

It sits in a filing company.

Sits in a filing company. And so, you know, so if there's, you know, if there's a way that we can actually when something is, is put in then, then people that are putting that information in get an acknowledgment, you know, and, and then, and then very, very quickly afterwards, you know, there's, there's something positive that comes out of, of that, you know, of that interaction. Then, then that's, that's going to start to snowball.

Absolutely.

You know, I, I ran, I can remember I ran, I used to run a quarry. Okay. So my background is quarry engineering. And, and I had this quarry in, in South Wales, this place called Bilth Wells. And, and when I turned up as the, as the site manager there, the guys in, I mean it was mainly guys. It's a very, very mal orientated industry, but the guys, nobody ever listened to them, you know. And, and so, and so all of a sudden, you know, we started to ask questions. And there was tons of cynicism to begin with. You know, you know, what's the point in us saying anything? Because nothing happens, nothing ever happens. And so it became my responsibility as the site manager to actually prove to them that I am prepared to listen, I'm prepared to do something about it. And so what we develop in safety remotely has got to support that process so that it makes it very, very easy for people to put information in. It makes it very, very easy for people to interpret it and then to actually feedback in a way that people see that's of value. And we started to do stuff at, at, you know, when I worked in Mid Wales, once we started to do stuff, then people started to come forward with more and more and more. And I can remember my boss at the time, a guy called Chris coming around, he says, colin, he says, how do you, how do you keep on top of everything? He goes, every time I come to the site, stuff's changed. He said, the stuff always changing. He says, how do you keep on top of it all? And I just said, well, I said, you know, to be fair, I'm, I'm just like the conduit, if you know what I mean. I'm just, I'm just sort of, you know, allowing things to happen. It's the, it's the, it's the lads, it's the guys, it's the people that actually, that actually work on the site, they're the ones that are making it happen because, because they know the best things to do. And so what we've done is we've just listened to them and then, and then given them the resources. And it's not always money, you know, sometimes it's just time they need.

And it's interesting because sometimes metrics drive the wrong behavior. So you might look at a site and go, actually, we want zero incidents, zero near misses. I actually think high near misses is good because then you're improving to actually reduce the chance of one of those serious events ever happening. But the culture around numbers is that zero for safety is a good number. And I'm just not convinced it is.

I've got a real problem with zero, zero harm, zero incidents and all that kind of stuff because, because as, as an organization, you know, if it gets, you know, when a, when do you start measuring it from? Do you start, do you start measuring it from 10 o' clock this morning? You know, or we haven't had, we haven't had an accident today or we've zero then. Is it the Last day is it the last week is the last month. It's almost like a, you know, it's got, I don't see how you're ever going to be able to be able to get an accurate measure. And what that will mean and what it does is it drives people to silence. And I think that's the laziness if you're not careful. That's. Then that's the thing, you know, and if, if somebody, you know, why, why would you want to put anything into your business from a health and safety perspective, that's shutting people up. I don't get it. I don't understand it. And in actual fact, you know, we should be, we should be applauding it when, when people, when people, even if somebody, right, if somebody does something wrong, okay, but then puts their hand up and says, I've got it wrong, they should be, they should be not taken, not necessarily taken at a pub, but.

They should be, you know, it should be well done.

This is fantastic. You know, however, I mean, if they, if they do something wrong and they get caught doing something wrong, you know, and they were doing it for the wrong reasons, I think you've got to manage that, you've got to deal with that. But if somebody puts their hand up, you've got to support them. Yeah. And so, and so the more we can encourage the people with their hands up and when you're saying, you know, that there should be, there should be loads and loads of near misses that people are reported, I think there's actually even a stage better than that, of course. And that is, you know, let's, let's start reporting all the good stuff that goes on in the business and let's get really good at normalizing good stuff because, you know, because the more we can talk about the good things that go on, the more hopefully it's going to encourage, you know, you know, just people to, to do things, to do things. How, how it's best for them to do it.

But maximizing that engagement is a challenge, isn't it? Because people avoid reporting things. They avoid putting their hand up. They don't want to stand up in front of their mates and say, what I'm doing is good because of some of the workplace cultures surrounding it. So you have to make that process of submitting any feedback easy and you have to demonstrate the value of it. So if an ear miss or if an event safety event is reported, then what's the action? How does that drive positive behavior quickly? And that time of response will be Crucial. But equally, when you're reporting on the good things, what's the culture within the business that ensures that that helps everybody lift rather than just being the same two people every week who've done something good again? And the cynicism that comes with it.

Yeah, you're totally right there and that. But then what you're talking about there is just good management, isn't it? It goes back to this. And I suppose if we can use technology and use systems to take away some of the mundane and the boring things, because health and safety's got a bit of a bad rap in it, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty boring. And, you know, and if we can take, if we can take that, that mundane and boring stuff away and, and systemize it, then, then hopefully it gives people more time to do the things that have real value. And that's having those conversations, it's going out, it's having those discussions, having those chats, talking to the people that are doing the work and actually saying, you know, well, you know, how do we do it? You know, and, and how often. It was interest. I read this thing the other day, right, and this. And it was, it was about. It's about risk assessment and accident investigations. Okay. And. And I thought this was really top, top seller.

It's good, it's good.

But, but when an accident's happened, right, okay. And something's gone wrong, if you look at the people that are sitting around the table that are discussing that particular incident or that event and the time that they're putting into that, okay, you know, the senior management team, you know, often the managing director, if something really bad shit's happened, you know, there's, you know, all the time that they put into that. And you compare that to the amount of time and who was involved in put in actually doing the risk assessment for the task that the individual was doing when they got hurt, massive, massive disconnect. Yeah, huge disconnect. And so, you know, so rather than, you know, rather than spending, you know, spending that time, you know, looking at the accident or the incident that's gone, let's encourage the managers, let's encourage the senior manager in the business to dedicate some of their time to actually looking at the jobs that can cause people to get injured or hurt. And, and I'm not saying a senior manager or a senior director is going to come out and, you know, and look at every single job and every single task that's going on in the workplace. And to be fair, they don't need to. But if we can get better at understanding, well, what are the really significant risk activities? You know, what are the jobs that if something goes wrong, you know, it's really gonna, it's really gonna be horrible, then let's spend the time proactively looking at those things. And part of what safety Remotely does is it helps you identify those jobs, you know, identify those jobs, those tasks that have got that significant risk and.

It'S effectively baking that continuous improvement process into a business so that they see it as not a. Well, we've done a risk assessment because I've been on projects where you do a risk assessment. Tick the box, crack on. But actually if it's baked into a process where every week there is an emphasis on making a slight improvement, then that compounds, doesn't it? And it's just how you bake that into a process and bake it into a company.

Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. You know, and it's, you know, the amount of, I look at the amount of risk assessments that, that get written and how rubbish they are. But again, I mean, you know, I think, I think there's a real role, you know, you know, again, this is, I suppose this is something for the future from a safety remotely perspective. But if you could, if you could actually get something like AI right to, to, to actually look at all of a company's documentation and the whole lot. Every risk assessment that's ever been written, every management meeting that's ever been held, every, every noise survey, every fire risk assessment, every structural integrity assessment that's done and then, and then actually analyze that and then actually just say to it.

Right, what are the five most important things? From everything you've read, what are the five most important things that we need to do?

You know, then I think, I think it'd be really interesting to see what it chucked out.

No idea what it would chuck out, but that's definitely something depend on the.

Quality of the business and the risk assessments, wouldn't it? But I think the fact that it can also understand the type of business, the sites, the safety record that is available on the public domain, the previous share reports are issued, what are the valued things that are being communicated to the customers as well as the underlying risks within a business and then make recommendations and tie that to shareholder value, then you can open eyes quite quickly, can't you?

And I think so. And I think, I think one of the things, and again, you're raising a really interesting point there. I think one of the things that health and safety people have been absolutely rubbish at. Okay. Is communicating with the senior management team and the board, you know, the, the C suite or whatever you want to call it in a language that they understand that they get. Yeah, you know, and you know, and you know, if, if I was to walk into a boardroom and say, you know, well, you know, your risk assessment for, for your, you know, for the, for the, for the activity of, of cleaning out that particular hopper ain't particularly good, then they're going to go, really?

Yeah, thanks.

You know, whereas if you can actually say, you know, the, the, the, the potential risk to your business of not getting that right would not only be some kind of, you know, some kind of, of, you know, morale fatal incident, but also is gonna, it's gonna potentially cost you, you know, 300, 000 pound.

On your bottom line and your job, Mr. Maryland.

And your job, you know, and you know, and if you, and if you then start to say, you know, okay, so this, this site, it has got a turnover of, I don't know, 1.6 million.

Yeah, two day shutdown equals.

Yeah, you had a two day shutdown plus the fine. You know, is it actually even worth opening that site without getting this risk controlled properly? Because, because you could lose all of that, you could lose all of that financial impact very, very quickly, you know, so, so, you know, so make better decisions on these high risk activities.

And the value that service has for all of the other health and safety consultants that are using safety remotely is huge. Because when they're engaging with a new customer, they can say, we'll do an audit. The price of the audit is X. And the result of the audit is we'll tell you the financial impact of your current status of your risk assessments and the processes you have in place and then we'll help develop a solution to resolve those. It's huge value.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, and that's the, you know, it's gotta be seen and people see health and safety is a cost, okay. But if you do things the right way, it can have a massive improvement on your bottom line. You know, and, you know, and that's, you know, that's how that's. But it's difficult to, it's difficult to quantify it.

It is and it is bridging that gap too. Because while nobody wants anybody to have an injury or die in a work environment, also quite often they're really conscious of their bottom line and minimizing cost and spend and that's often a delta that causes problems. So how you Tie it together and communicate it in a way that the exec team buy in from day one is one of the oldest challenges in business.

It's a massive challenge. But again, if you can do it the right way, I've got a client at the moment that he's putting some tenders together and being able to provide him with the information about his business that he can then actually use to demonstrate to the people that he's tendering for that he has actually got a really, really good control of, of, of, of how he, how he manages his, his team, his and the activities puts him in a really, really strong position, you know. You know, so that, so because, because he is one of four or five people that are tendering for work. And so if he's, if he is able to, to present himself better from a health and safety perspective, you know, then that's a big, that's a big tick on, you know, and potentially allows him to charge a little bit more for his services. Yeah, so.

So it's so much potential there, isn't there?

It's exciting in it.

I just don't sleep.

But, you know, but the thing is, is, you know, there's, you know, the, And I think, you know, what sometimes happens where a lot of technology gets things wrong is, you know, is it doesn't try to bring these different aspects together, you know, it just tries to do just one thing, you know, whereas, you know, and I think you've got to be careful that you don't try to do everything. You know, I wouldn't want to do everything poorly, but what I want to do is say, right, well, let's do these certain bits that we're aiming to do, which is help an organization, you know, get a better understanding of where they are from a, From a compliance perspective. Hold their, hold their documentation in a, In a more structured way and, and get better quality, better quality, you know, sort of assessments of the risk in their business. Then those things are, those things are really worth doing. Yeah.

And when it's combined with human in the loop, then you've still got people buying people and you're effectively just automating some of the things that weren't happening well in the business before.

Yeah.

And the value then you get from that near miss reporting from that, analyzing documentation and making recommendations to the board on what they should be doing. And the financial impact of that isn't coming from a computer. It's coming from an expert in their field who's just backed by data.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the thing, you know, this morning I was on a, I do a bit of coaching with a health and safety, health safety consultancy this morning. And you know, we were, we were just putting together some ideas from a risk assessment perspective. Okay. And it's an important part of it. And we've, we've spent the, you know, we've spent the time pulling together the training course that they want to deliver out. And, and, and today we were actually talking about, right, we've got to take this to market, okay, and so, and so I could go to chat GPT or something like that and I could say, right, you know, give us a marketing strategy for putting out a risk assessment training course. And, and you'll get something, you know, you'll definitely get something and it will probably, it'll probably read, okay, but I didn't want to do it that way. I said what we'll do, I said is we'll, let's talk through what the things are that really impact a business management manager in respect of, you know, you know, even trying to just getting his head around, you know, why would he want to do risk assessment in the first place. And we, and so we had a chat, we had a chat through those ideas and we put them down, we put them down into a document, okay, and sort of typed them out. And then that's what we put into, into ChatGPT and said, right, now turn all this stuff that we've put down here into something that actually sounds a little bit engaging. And, and so the quality of the thing that came out was, was an awful lot better than we, than we would have been able to do just by us thinking about stuff. It was, the final document was better than if we just asked a really bland question at the beginning. And so, you know, so, you know, so you need, how I see it is you need to interact, you need to interact with the technology and give it, you know, give it, you know, my experience, give it my, you know, my learnings over, over a bit of time and then take that on and then, and then get AI to, to do the, to do the clever bit.

It's not even necessarily to do the clever bit. It's taking that wisdom of a crowd and then adding a bit of process and structure and knowledge from a wider audience of everything that's on the Internet. But fundamentally it's just tidying up and tying up what was given as input. So you've done all of the hard work by having that conversation, by pulling together the input materials. And so you're combining that expertise with a different form of expert and then reviewing the output. You're not using that output as a given. You're not going to go, okay, well now ChatGPT has come out with a marketing strategy and because it took all of our inputs, it's great. You're still going to tweak and evolve it. There's bits of it that you'll use exactly as an element. So you'll go, well, we're not actually going to do that.

That's right. That's right.

And so it's human in the loop and just using automation and AI in the right way to improve the efficiency in a process and elevate the capabilities of the people in the room.

Yeah. And I really like that, you know that. Human in the loop. I like that. It's interesting, you know, there's a big thing at the moment from a health and safety perspective about they call in it safety clutter. Okay. And they're saying that there's loads of, there's loads of, there's loads of, of, of crap the organizations have.

Yeah.

That are often historic. Right.

And what was always so funny is they put a guide together on safety clutter and it was 18 pages long. I thought somebody chuck that through chat GPT will.

Yeah.

And bring it down to a one page, one bit of eight, four. But it was, but, but again, it's so, it's so easy because, you know.

Because I think one of the things, you know, one of the things that, that people are always scared of. Right. Is, is it's almost, it's like fomo, you know, but it's, it's about a fear of missing the wrong stuff out.

Yeah.

Okay. And so, you know, so they try and put everything down, you know, and, and I'm, you know, if I was to say to, to you. Right. Let me, let me, let me ask you a question. Right, okay.

I'm going to ask questions.

Yeah. I'm gonna ask you about that ladder ladder safety. Okay. I may have, I don't know if I watched this before, right. But, but probably not.

I think we've had better, more interesting conversations than this. But if I was to ask you.

Right. The one thing. Okay. What's the one thing to do, okay. To, to reduce the number of people that are, that are injured on ladders, what would it be?

Well, I would say probably less people on ladders, but.

Okay.

Isn't it two points of contact?

Okay, interesting. Okay. So, so I think it's, I think it's three points of contact that you're thinking about, okay.

It's not what I'm doing sometimes it's one.

But you're, but you're a far. Okay, so, so, so, so the one thing right is, is, is don't carry something when you're climbing a ladder, okay? And if you, because if you try and carry something when you're climbing up a ladder, you can't maintain those points of contact and so you fall off. But when you get, when you talk to people, people come up with so many different things that they, they all, you got to get at a right angle, it's got to be footed, it's got to be tied off at the top. There's, there's loads and loads of bits and pieces that it could be okay? And, and, and each one of them in their own right has probably got some value. Okay? But if you try to provide somebody with all of that information in one go, then they don't take any of it in. You know, there's only a small amount of information that you can, you can take in any one time. So, so you know what we've got to get better at and I see that technology and I can definitely help us with this is to engage with people more frequently about a topic, but just give them a little bit of information about that topic rather than giving them everything. Okay? And so we're just, we're just drip feeding in regularly information and if we can do it around a really important and key risks that are happening on your site because as a business, we know where the, where the key risks are, then all of a sudden if people are getting dripped this information in, you know, we, you know, we, you know, it's called nudging, isn't it? You know what I mean? You know, you nudge, you know, if we can be nudging people about, you know, about a certain risk or a certain, and control or something that they need to do, you know, regularly, you know, but in a way that's, that's, that's supportive, encouraging, then we've got a really, really great chance. And so we don't need to tell everybody about everything, you know, but let's tell people because, because you know, people, people aren't stupid and you know, most people, you know, when you, when you look at incidents and when you look at accidents, you know, people who've had the ancillary accident, okay, people are often. That was bloody stupid. It was stupid doing that. But it wasn't at the time, at the time when they were doing whatever it was that they were doing. It made sense to them, okay, because, because they were, they, they were, they weren't. They were. Maybe they're the, the things that they could have been thinking about were blocked by production issues or, you know, pressure from a client or, you know, stuff going on at home, you're outside of work, you know, that's, that's, that's basically filling up their, their mental capability. And so, and so they don't make the right call and they get wrong, they get hurt. And, and if the control measures that we have in place for a, for a business, right, relies on the person at the sharp end, okay, Getting it right every single time, okay. Don't be surprised if we still carry on hurting people because people make mistakes and people get things wrong. So if we can come up with ways of actually just, you know, just before somebody's going to do, you know, say we know that we've got some maintenance work going on this weekend, you know, a couple of days beforehand, we can be getting the right information dripping into, dripping into them in whatever way. Okay.

I'm not sure how, okay, but we've got some ideas.

But if we can get that information coming into them in a way that, that is just getting them just to be thinking about it and they just, you know, almost raising their competence in that particular issue with, For a short amount of time, then, then, then that's going to be better than, you know, than them having to be really, really competent in absolutely everything all the time. Because it ain't going to happen. No.

And the next time I'm up a ladder, holding on with my foot, cutting the top of a tree, I should get somebody to help.

Yeah, that's right. As you said, don't got ladder. You know, get some, you know, get someone else to. Get someone else to do it. You don't need to do it. You don't need to. The problem is, is, you know, on your estate, you've got so many trees, haven't you?

You, you know, that, you know, they're.

Not in my house or garden, but there's a lot around the estate. So what impact is AI and robots going to have in the space of health and safety?

Hopefully massive, you know, I mean, it's a, you know, I think if we don't, if we don't embrace, you know, the AI and technology, then, then we are gonna, we're gonna carry on injuring and hurting people. And I suppose one of, one of the things that you know, is to think about is that in actual fact in the uk, okay, we're pretty good from a health and safety perspective. But, but worldwide, you know, the numbers, the numbers are just enormous about how many people are getting injured and killed, you know, and so, and so introducing, introducing technology to help businesses and to help organizations simply and I suppose also cheaply.

I was going to say cost is critical, isn't it? Because the cost of manufacture in countries that don't have health and safety legislation is a lot lower. Value on human life is lower. But people like cheap products.

That's right. You know, and I suppose, you know, if you think about, you know, if you think about, you know, how, how we, how we learn. Okay, you tend to learn more in life when you get something wrong.

Yeah.

Okay. You know that, that tends to be, you know, when, when you're, you know, when, when it, when it really sort of hits home, when it's, you know, when it, when it, you know, I always use the analogy, you know, you know, how many, how many, how many, how many of you. Have you, have you ever been into a pub?

Once or twice.

Okay.

Have you been in a pub with an open fire?

Yes.

Okay. Have you thought about sticking your hand in open fire?

Yes. You have to put another log in. But as long as it's short exposure, it's okay.

Okay, okay. But people tend not to want to put their hand in there. Okay. Because, because it burns and it hurts. Okay. However, if you take a child, a toddler that's about, I don't know, 12, 13 months old to start, started to walk, you know, would you leave that child in that pub with that open fire on their own? You probably wouldn't. Okay. Because they haven't experienced the downside of, of that, of that particular, that particular risk, that particular hazard, you know. So, you know, now I suppose if you think about, if you think about the UK and you think about industry, okay, we had our industrial revolution. Okay. You know, we've had it for many, many years and we've learned, okay, we've learned loads and loads of stuff over the years and there's things, there's things that we don't do now, and legislation has tended to be a big, big driver in, in that, you know, things go wrong and then a piece of legislation comes out that actually says, you've got to start looking at this now. And so, and so we've done a lot of learning now. I'm not saying that we should be, you know, going around like the Commonwealth telling people exactly how you've got to do it this way. You've got to do it that way. But, but Jesus, we should be, we should be helping people understand their risks and their hazards because, because we've experienced the downside of it. And so, you know, so if we can use, you know, if you could use technology to look at how industry over the last 15, I'm sorry, 150 years in the UK has changed. And then, and then actually, then go to some developing countries in the world and actually saying, look, you don't need to do that. You know, there is some of the mistakes that we've made, you know, you know, don't make those same mistakes, then hopefully a lot of people, a lot of people won't get hurt. And if you think about, you know, you know, I look at, I look at the mills, okay, in the, you know, in, up in Derbyshire and, and Lancashire and places like that, and there used to be, there used to be children, right, that used to, that used to crawl between the machines if the, if there was a thing called the shuttle. They used to go backwards and forwards that used to get stuck and children used to crawl between the machines and used to get killed. Okay. And then things like the factories act and stuff like that came, came about. Well, you look at some of the, you know, some of the other countries around the world, you know that they're, they're employees, you know, and especially when they're, when they're developing, you know, precious metals and all that for, for the consumers of the, of the Western society, in the main, you know, there's people that are being put at massive risk, you know, that, that don't need to be. And it's either happening because the people who are managing the business either don't know about a risk or they're unscrupulous. And I've, I tend to think that there's probably a bit of both, but I think a lot of it is just that they aren't, they aren't aware and they don't know what to do.

And culturally it hasn't really mattered.

That's right.

And so as you look at the, the cost of any technology over time comes down, we will see humanoid robots that are at a lower cost on an hourly basis than even the cheapest labor ultimately. And that's going to make a huge difference in those environments because there will still be a need to pull the rare metals out of the earth and to process them, to embroider clothes, to make rugs and blankets and everything else, but it doesn't necessarily need to be human labor that's doing it.

That's right. That's right. Not at all, you know, and again, you know, if we can get, you know, you know, respiratory health is huge, you know. You know, as I say, you know, thousands of people in the UK still die from respiratory issues. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions around the world, you know, so if we can get people, you know, working in environments where there is a big risk to health, you know, respiratory health, you know, if we can, if we can eliminate those people from those environments and still do the work, then it's going to be. It's going to be good for society. I suppose the question is, what jobs do they go into then, you know, and that's always the, that's always the battle, isn't it?

That's always.

And, you know, we're not. It's not like the number of humans on the Earth is getting lower, I.

Think, you know, in some countries it definitely is.

Yeah, that's right.

But it's, you know, it's going up and so I suppose it's, you know, it's reward. What can we, you know, how to. How do people shift? How do people change their roles? Well, if we can get people that, you know, they're analyzing the information that's coming out and then improving the processes, improving the systems because of the information that the computers are telling us, then that could be a good thing.

Well, and that augmentation, so that people get more time, they're still able to deliver the same work output, they're still able to get the income that they want, but then they've got more time to spend on experiences. That sounds like the best of both worlds. We need bigger. Glastonbury, unfortunately, though.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right. There is Helpstonbury.

So, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's on a different scale. Yeah. So the future is bright, but there's. There's a lot of change ahead, isn't there?

Massive. Yeah. And I think. And it always will be and always us. So isn't it, you know, that, you know, that changes, you know, businesses that aren't. That aren't trying to change, that aren't trying to. To adapt, you know, that, you know, I think it's really important that, you know, that you are continually to look at, looking at it. And, and I think, you know, it's about. It's not just about solving problems either, you know, but it's about the way it is. It's the way that you do it. And so, you know, so, you know, we've touched on it a couple of times here. You know, it's not just about getting information to people, it's about doing it in a way that they can engage with, you know, and that's what's really important.

It's a dangerous term to use in health and safety, but it's change or die, isn't it? From a business perspective, if you don't continuously improve, you're being left behind and never has that been truer with the rate of change we have in technology.

I think, I think, I think you're totally right. And you know, and I think it's, you know, there's, there's loads of, you know, there's loads of things out there and there's so many things that you, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's training now that you can do with, with headsets and you know, so you can actually try and immerse yourself in, in the environment, but you know that you're, that you're going to be going and working in, you know, so you can troll stuff out. There's, there's lots and lots of really clever stuff that's, that's going on out there, but there's also some really simple things, you know, and I think this is, this for me is, is, is, you know, you know, the thing that Safety Remotely is trying to do is trying to just trying to take those, those simple, more mundane processes and maximize the value out of those. Because, because they're the things that a lot of organizations and a lot of businesses just don't do very well. And there's, there's so many small and medium sized companies, you know, that, you know, don't want to go on a massive cultural change. They don't want to, you know, they just want to do what they do, but let's do what they do a little bit better. And if we can help them achieve that then and use health and safety as part of the, you know, part of the process of making that improvement, then that's got to be a good thing.

That right there is the perfect end point. Thank you very much, Colin. It's been an absolute pleasure.

That's been really good. I've enjoyed, really enjoyed meeting up with you, Tim.